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by Niki



Category: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Genre: Addiction, Family, Friendship, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/pseuds/Niki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lola has never been a victim, she has always been a survivor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Damkianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/gifts).



> Your letter gave me so many ideas but I couldn't fit all of them here, and trying to add Tao just didn't work with the flow of the story. And I am so sorry there is no banter, I don't even know what happened, usually I write so much dialogue but this is how the story came to me, and I had to go with it. I hope it has something you like anyway! I loved your letter so much I had marked you down for treats anyway, and I had the first chapter of this waiting even before I got the assignment:)
> 
> The first three chapters are the story, the fourth is a silly little paragraph that refused to grow into a scene.

Lola is strong. She has to be, no one grows up weak in the Banlieue and ends up anything but a victim. Lola has never been a victim, she has always been a survivor. 

Lola is strong, but not even she can kick addiction with a shrug. But sewer rats don't get into expensive rehab clinics with stars and politicians, no matter what strings Damien tries to pull, and the cheaper options are almost as bad as being stuck with Taha. 

Lola is strong, she can do this at home, with her brother as her only support. She is strong but he is stronger, physically, he can stop her when she tries to fight him, when she tries to hurt herself, when she tries to run away.

There are days he can't leave her alone, and they would starve if Damien didn't show up with food one day. They don't ask, and he doesn't berate them for not asking for help sooner. He just shows up with food regularly after that.

Sometimes he stays with Lola so that Leïto can get out, even for just half an hour, to run, to jump, to breathe air outside their tiny apartment.

Damien is strong, too, he doesn't give in to her no matter how she screams, hurls insults on him, bites and scratches and kicks; or when she tries to cajole, pout, and seduce; or even when she tries to pretend she's asleep to sneak out when his guard is down.

Lola is strong, she gets better. The pain and the burning recede, the craving mutes down, the memories lose their sharpest sting. 

She has to remember her own strength now, go back to being a survivor instead of a victim, be self-sufficient again. She has to go out on her own. 

Leïto fights her on it, of course, so used to looking after her letting her go anywhere alone now goes against everything he is. 

Lola is strong, she can make even Leïto change his mind. 

One day, six months after they saved the Banlieue, Lola packs a backpack and walks away from the District into a bus headed out of Paris. 

\- - -

Lola has been gone for two days when Damien shows up with food and he and Leïto sit down to eat it. It doesn't strike Leïto until later that the food isn't needed now that he can leave the apartment when he wishes, now that Lola isn't convalescing any more. 

Damien shows up again, and Leïto doesn't point this out to him, doesn't ask. He doesn't really want to know if it's just a habit, or if Damien wants to be there even when Lola isn't.

This goes on, a week or two, until one day Damien tells him he might have to go undercover again. 

“Let me know when you do,” Leïto says, almost casually, but the other man clearly hears it as the demand it is.

“I might not be able to...”

“Call me.”

“Leïto...”

“If Lola can deign to phone in once a week to let me know she's still okay...”

“How did you manage that?”

“She knows I know she can take care of herself. She also knows I worry.”

“It might be on short notice. I might only have time for one call in a weird time.”

“I'll get an answer phone.”


	2. Between

The undercover job is a first of many in a row, and before Damien knows it has been over a year since he's last seen Leïto. 

He keeps leaving messages, whenever he starts a new job, but, somehow, not when he is back from one. It's like there isn't time, he hasn't got the energy the man's mere presence seems to require. Leïto is so vibrant he feels unequal to the task of meeting him.

If Leïto would even want that. He is back trying to clean his home, and Damien is a cop. The Banlieue doesn't like cops. 

He thinks about him all the time, though. When he dons a mini dress for a mission it is not his girlfriend's reaction he keeps picturing, it's Leïto's. Would the man laugh himself silly? Would he approve of his one-track mind in pursuit of his goals, regardless of the methods?

Would he find it hot?

He tries to quell those thoughts. He has a girlfriend. (He isn't sure why, or even how, he is never home, he is never himself, and even when he is, they don't really connect. Not like he did with a certain pair of siblings from the wrong side of town.)

Still, when he finds himself in trouble, there is only one person he thinks of, only one number he calls. A number he knows by heart.

\- - -

It may have been two years since they last danced this dance together, but their bodies still remember the hard-won rhythm. They fight like a team, like partners, and Damien wonders why he let so much time pass without having this. 

Leïto nags him comfortably for his lack of contact, and he keeps trying to explain himself to the man, trying to show him who he is. Leïto receives this in his own inimitable style (“'Constitution is my Bible.' Who talks like that?”) and calls him Super Cop. 

As they fight to prove Super Cop is not Dirty Cop, they uncover a bigger plot behind it all – of course they do. 

This time they let the Banlieue blow up.

\- - -

“I don't want other two years to pass before seeing you again,” Leïto says, and Damien hates himself for making him be the brave one in this, too.

They are standing on a rooftop, watching the rubble that used to be the District, and, cliché of all clichés, the sun is setting behind them.

“I know,” he says, but doesn't know how to continue, doesn't know where they are going, if Leïto is even in a same scene as him.

“Idiot,” Leïto says, and (finally, finally,) kisses him.


	3. Home

Lola checks the address on the postcard Leïto sent her a few months ago. The building is nicer than she has ever seen her brother in, but that's what the card says. When no one answers her knock she finds the spare key he wrote to her about, and lets herself in. 

She drops the backpack by the door, and goes to explore. The first thing that draws her gaze are the large windows that fill a whole wall in the living room, glass doors leading to a wide balcony. She can picture her brother exiting that way more often than through the door, and the pair of sneakers by the doors add credence to her theory. 

The windows overlook the area that used to be her home, rebuilding already in progress, and she stands there, looking, for a long time. This is the first time she has been back in Paris for over two years, and this is the first glimpse she has of the Banlieue. 

The district is strong, it will survive. She turns away from the window.

The living room is sparsely furnished, a sofa, a TV table, a punching bag; nothing too surprising. Simple kitchen, stocked fridge, and she steals a bottle of beer before continuing her tour. 

She comes to a halt at the open bedroom door. Her brother is home, after all, and he is not alone. 

There are clothes on the floor, lying in an untidy pile, which speaks of some haste as the rest of the room looks clean and orderly. She thinks that might be the influence of the other occupant of the bed, her brother is many things but he is not neat. 

Still, she gains the impression the haste was due to fatigue, not passion: the men are sleeping so deeply, exhaustion still lingering on their form, visual proof in the bags under their eyes.

They are almost spooning, both on their sides, Damien's face against Leïto's back, his arm around his waist, but body not quite flush with his. The duvet covers them up enough that she still doesn't find out if Damien wears boxers or briefs. 

She realises suddenly she isn't even surprised. There was always something, the way the two fought, talked, ran together. She knows they haven't been together all the time she was gone, that it has to be a recent thing, but they already look so perfectly right together here in what must be _their_ apartment, that she can't even be angry at them for not telling her. 

She leaves them to their rest, closes the bedroom door, and goes back to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.


	4. Bonus

“Wow,” Lola says, staring at the woman she just saw subdue a room full of men with her hair. Her _hair_! “What conditioner do you use?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Inspired by Michelene Wandor's poem, _Eve Meets Medusa_ )


End file.
